In message m27ih6p68o.fsf@ohwell.denx.de you wrote:
As I hinted at in my other mail, git is my prime example of living up to the spirit of unix - and still many commands there, e.g. git-push need a '-f' to prevent clobbering costly changes inadvertently.
The important point is the "inadvertently". It is OK if you need an overwrite flag for commands that in the normal course of action are non-destructive, but in special situations are.
However, commands which are designed to cause "destructive" actions don't ask:
* rm does not ask by default. Not even for "rm -r *" * mkfs does not ask normally - it will happily kill the whole partition's content * cp or mv will happily overwrite target files (assuming sufficient permissions) etc.
The "clearenv" command has a well-defined purpose: clear the environment. Similar like "erase" will clear the flash. Or "cp" or "mw" will overwrite even vital parts of the RAM. No questions being asked.
Best regards,
Wolfgang Denk